challenges: approach to solving challenges

General principles for solving Clojure challenges

Signed-off-by: John Practicalli <250870+practicalli-john@users.noreply.github.com>

docs/coding-challenges/index.md

@@ -6,7 +6,22 @@ Coding challenges are an excellent way to start learning a new language.  The ch
 
 Challenges are there to explore a language and practice your understanding of how to assemble working code.  It is recommended to try different approaches to solving a challenges and even repeat the same challenges at a later date and see what additional approaches you have learned.
 
-[4Ever-Clojure](https://4clojure.oxal.org/){target=_blank} is a highly recommended starting point for learning Clojure and does not require any installation or setup.  4Ever-Clojure is a new implementation of 4Clojure.com.
+[Exercism.io](https://exercism.io){target=_blank} and [4Ever-Clojure](https://4clojure.oxal.org/){target=_blank} are highly recommended starting point for learning Clojure and does not require any installation or setup.  4Ever-Clojure is a new implementation of 4Clojure.com.
+
+## Approach to solving challenges
+
+Take a few minutes to digest the description of the challenge and make notes.
+
+Identify the simplest possible thing to do, solving the problem in many small pieces which encourages experimentation
+
+- experiment, write code and evaluate to see what it does (optionally create a comment with the result)
+- use a rich comment `(comment ,,,)` to capture multiple ideas and designs, even failed experiments can be useful (separates experiments from working code)
+- continually evaluate code as expressions are written, to ensure their behaviour is understood (try different argument values for functions)
+- try different shapes of data
+- transform data shapes to keep function definitions simpler
+
+Once there is a working solution, refactor or try different approaches and evaluate the merit of alternative solutions
+
 
 | Challenge website                                     | Description                                               | Requirements                                                                                      |
 |-------------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|